A Relativistic Treatment of Radiation Transitions

Roy H. Garstang

Keh‐Ning Huang

Radiative transitions in atoms are formulated as multipole radiations from a localized charge-current distribution. The correspondence between the relativistic quantum mechanical and classical electrodynamic treatments is demonstrated explicitly. Definitions for multipole moments, line strengths, and oscillator strengths in relativistic quantum mechanics are also summarized.

F. A. Babushkin

JOSIP SEKE

It is shown that the application of a self-consistent projection-operator method, developed recently by the author, makes a complete treatment of the spontaneously decaying atomic state in relativistic QED possible. In a new physical real-transition interaction picture (in which the unobservable interaction of the free electron with the vacuum radiation field is eliminated) explicit finite analytic results for the non-Markovian time evolution and the radiative line shape in the case of relativistic Lyman-α spontaneous emission are obtained.

Kunnat J. Sebastian

Using a new approach to the problem of the interaction of a composite system with a quantized radiation field, an expression for the two-photon amplitude of a composite system is derived in its center-of-mass frame, correct to order ${v}^{2}$/${c}^{2}$. In the expression for the amplitude there are terms which depend on the recoil of the composite system due to the emission of the photons. These terms which are of order ${v}^{2}$/${c}^{2}$ compared to the nonrelativistic terms were neglected in the previous relativistic treatments of the problem. We also show that the amplitude is relativistically invariant to order ${v}^{2}$/${c}^{2}$, when viewed from another Lorentz frame. We have used the relativistic center-of-mass and internal variables of Krajcik and Foldy [R. A. Krajcik and L. L. Foldy, Phys. Rev. D 10, 1777 (1974)] throughout the treatment.

George William Series